Seasons Come and Go, Even As I Beg
by Dream of Cream
Summary: Continuation of drabble series Always Snow. Nix Potter meets the guardians throughout her life.
1. The Curtain

_Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing._

 _We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sump of corpse-flesh._

 _\- 'The Curtain'_ by Hayden Carruth

 _The truth is dark under your eyelids._

 _What are you going to do about it?_

 _The birds are silent; there's no one to ask._

 _All day long you'll squint at the gray sky._

 _When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw._

 _\- 'Against Winter'_ by Charles Simic

* * *

Sirius Black is mad with betrayal.

He felt it like barbed wire around his soul, like his only heat source gone out in the freezing cold. The wards had been broken and that meant only one thing. Pettigrew had turned.

The RAT! Merlin, he had TRUSTED him! He was the one who-

He was the one to-

 _Why_ -

They're dead, _they're dead, deaddead_ _ **DEAD**_ -

* * *

Sirius Black is mad with grief.

He hands over his precious goddaughter to Hagrid, trusted in this man when he couldn't trust-

 _(himself?)_

 _(Or was it-)_

He hunts.

* * *

Sirius Black is mad with rage.

He was so close, he was so-

He's gone. In fact, the entire street is too.

 _(maybe this time he didn't fail?)_

He comforts in the warm _(alive)_ feeling of his bond with his goddaughter.

It's all he has left now.

* * *

Sirius Black is mad with denial.

He is arrested by the same aurors he served with, under, over.

 _(maybe this time he deserves it)_

 _(they don't KNOW-)_

He is sentenced to Azkaban with no trial.

* * *

Sirius Black is mad with despair.

It's all he can feel these days.

 _(they sweep by their cells, suckingsucking_ _ **sucking**_ _)_

He huddles in a corner of his cell, shuddering and seizing through another round.

He doesn't think he would have made it half as long without their bond, warming him when nothing else can.

* * *

He feels the bond break.

.

.

.

Sirius Black is mad.


	2. Drop Off

It's hard to look at her.

* * *

Albus is warned too late to help, even though as soon as the wards were broken he was notified. He is the great Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, but even he has responsibilities. It these responsibilities that hold him back from leaving the (useful, yet so infuriating) party, as well as a well honed sensibility. He does not run, but his stride is long; he carries an air of absolute importance, yet without a hint of urgency as he leaves.

He arrives to see a house half in rubble.

* * *

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall. "And I don't suppose you're going to tell me _why_ you're here, of all places?"

Albus doesn't quite know why he's bothering to put on such a show _(oh, but yes he does)_ but he answers all the same, demeanor as unruffled as when he first appeared.

"I've come to bring Nix to her aunt and uncle." The tightness in his chest constricts until it's as if he's fighting his last breath to get his next words out. The unbending will life had fought long and hard to instill in him pushed him forward all the same. "They're the only family she has left now."

He watches as his deputy headmistress recoils. It's not hard to see the emotions flickering like a candle flame in the wind cross her face, but it is to feel them weighing down on his own.

Albus Dumbledore is an icon, a hero. He is the wise old man that has seen the world with its virtue and sin twice over, and stood strong and hale in spite, and even because of it. But blow after blow can whittle a person down where they stood strong in the face of one, no matter how powerful, and this...

Even he can not help but crumble. Still, there is a foundation he can rely upon, a safe haven he can retreat to. There is hope yet, though the future still darkly intrudes upon his mind.

"You don't mean - you _cant_ mean the people who live _here_?" cried Professor McGonagall, jumping to her feet and pointing at number four. "Dumbledore - you can't. I've been watching them all day. You couldn't find two people who are less like us. And they've got this son - I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets. Nix Potter come and live here!"

"It's the best place for her," said Dumbledore firmly. "Her aunt and uncle will be able explain everything to her when she's older. I've written them a letter."

"A letter?" repeated Professor McGonagall faintly, sitting back down on the wall. It stirred a small guilt in him, but... the relief overwhelmed it. He already has a broken society, still full of hatred and wounds, to watch over and rebuild. This was a safe alternative to a responsibility, a weight, he didn't think he was prepared to haul onto his weakening shoulders. Onto his weeping heart.

"Really, Dumbledore, you think you can explain all this in a letter? These people will never understand her! She'll be famous - a legend - I wouldn't be surprised if today was known as Nix Potter day in the future - there will be books written about Nix - every child in our world will know her name!"

He's glad to be handed another excuse, even as he recognises what he's doing. Denial has been a character trait he's struggled with throughout his life, and tonight it languishes undisputed in his mind, himself too tired to really fight it.

"Exactly," he said, molding his face to a stern mask he aims pointedly over his half-moon glasses at her. His can feel his shoulders shake minutely. "It would be enough to turn any girl's head. Famous before she can walk and talk! Famous for something she won't even remember! Can't you see how much better off she'll be, growing up away from all that until she's ready to take it?"

As he watches her open and close her mouth, he knows he has grudgingly convinced her. There is doubt in the harsh set of her mouth, in the angling of her brows. She glances, briefly enough that others would take it as their imagination, at the house in question, and for second...

For a second, her eyes speak of the surety of her will to refute him. Her fire is kindling, almost ready to burst into a bonfire. She looks back at him though. She looks back and falters.

* * *

As he leaves little Nix Potter on the doorstep of number four, Privet Drive, he feels more like he's drowning in the guilt of abandonment than relaxing in the comfort of victory.

* * *

She's dark in the candlelight of the Great Hall, and it's hard to look at her.


End file.
